21.
“B eautiful night, isn’t it?” Says Timothy Byron as he makes his way to me.
He looks completely disheveled, with his hair all mused, his shirt untucked, and his belt buckle unclipped. He’s stumbling more than he’s walking, which means he’s either high or drunk. Or both.
He half-slumps, half-falls next to me on the bench, and when he accidentally pushes me a little, he curses, then mutters an apology to me. Dorran was right about the smell of weed and sex because Christ , this guy stinks of a drug-house.
I realize that my shoulders are stiff, and my back is arched.
So, in order to appear unaffected by his sudden presence, I relax my posture and tighten my hold on my clutch.
If I hadn’t hung up on Dorran already, I could have told him about having found our target.
But said target is sitting too close to me right now for me to pull out my phone and send a text to the crew, let alone call one of them.
Timothy bends and looks closely at me, making me face him. His glassy eyes narrow, and his features scrunch up as he continues to study me, and then, as if a switch has been turned on in his hazy brain, he sits up straight and gives me a lopsided grin.
“You’re the chick from YouTube!” he announces as if he’s made the most ground-shattering discovery. But also, chick , seriously? I don’t know what it is about that term that grates at me, but it does. So fucking much.
My lips wobble as I decide whether to smile at him or to stay indifferent. It’s hard to think in the moment because he’s sitting way too close to me, and his breath is so rancid that I just might start tearing up any second.
“You are, aren’t you?” he pushes, then studies me again. “Yeah, it is you. The hair is a dead giveaway.” He seems so satisfied with himself that it’s almost funny to watch.
I say nothing, then press one of my hands on the bench’s edge. Lifting my ass a little, I shift away from him, but I only get so far before he starts talking again.
“You must be pretty popular if Aras invited you to the gala. He loves hosting famous people; it’s always been a thing for him.”
“He’s a…” I clear my throat when my voice comes out scratchy. “He’s a friend.”
“She speaks!” Timothy exclaims, then moves closer to me still, ruining my feeble attempt at maintaining a distance from him.
Fuck. I should not have opened my mouth.
When I don’t respond to him, he sighs and looks straight ahead. He keeps rocking back and forth, and with the sense of his constant presence next to me, I can’t help but think: it’s going to have to be me.
I’m going to have to be the one to kill Timothy.
The plan was to find him and inform the others about it.
But that very plan has now gone out the fucking window because any move I make to reach out to my friends could alert the target.
There’s a strong chance he’ll flee if he feels even remotely threatened by me, and high as he may be, he’s still coherent enough, so letting him get suspicious will only hinder me from getting the job done.
My heart is in my throat, and I’m starting to sweat a little. It’s not out of fear, to be sure, but out of the possibility that I could fail. And when I do, it’ll not only blow the plan to shit, but also mess up the crew and I’s standing with Aras, especially Dorran’s.
Stressing about what others think may not seem relevant in most cases, but here, in this city – where one wrong move can massively change the course of one’s life – it’s very important to do things the right way.
“Do your parents love you?” Timothy asks, breaking the momentary silence.
The sound of crickets fills the air, and the weather seems to have dropped, because it’s gotten chillier than it was a few minutes ago.
“My parents are dead,” I tell him. The words slip past me before I can think on them, but now that I’ve spoken them out loud, I realize that I feel nothing .
I knew I wouldn’t, of course, but it’s the first time I’ve announced their deaths like this – as my parents . Shouldn’t that warrant a reaction?
Timothy swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says without looking at me. “Does it…how does it feel, not having either of them in your life?”
I don’t know why I’m indulging him. I guess it’s because there’s a comfort in being open with him, knowing his fate.
God, that’s so fucked up. But that’s life, isn’t it?
“I like how things are without them,” I answer.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because I get to be me and not care about facing repercussions for it. Because I get to do what I want, and when I want to without them judging and taunting each and every one of my choices. Their absence bred my hidden freedom, and I cherish it just as much as I do the people that are in my life right now.”
He looks at me. “You’re lucky,” he states. “I wanna say I am, too, since my mother’s dead. But my dad…well, he’s still around, and he’s a piece of work.”
“How so?”
Timothy chuckles, but there’s no humor in it.
“He thinks I don’t take the family business seriously.
He also thinks I’ll be the one to doom the Byron name for all eternity.
” He scoffs. “Well, I’m sorry, Dad , that I’m not interested in owning restaurants where actual fucking human beings are minced and seasoned on platters for other humans to eat.
While I understand that our world is a home for depravity, it doesn’t mean I want to be a part of it.
The money, the status – I don’t want any of it. ”
“And I’m assuming telling him that didn’t work?”
“Work? No. But it did get me a beating that left me bruised for days.”
His confession hits me like a ton of bricks.
I know for a fact that if I let myself dive in and think hard enough, I’ll still be able to feel the pain of every scar my mother gave me during the course of her life.
I know for sure that if I touch certain areas on my body, I’ll be able to get a clear sense of the bruises and bumps she used to leave me with, all in the name of petty jealousy.
Those days are over, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget about them.
Every tear I shed, or the ones I kept in have a story of their own.
I may have learned to lock away those memories, but every once in a while, I do let myself think about them, if only to assure myself of having won over them.
Those who try to oppress a person’s liberation by judging their choice of lifestyle are often people that hide behind an ugly, self-created mask.
It’s the same mask that makes them see flaws in someone instead of greatness; that blinds them to human decency and makes them appreciate the failures of others.
It’s a sickness, this mask, and sad as it is, a lot of people don’t see it that way.
If only they’d open their eyes and look , they’d realize how amazing the world can be without the meaningless gossip and negativity.
If only…
“I’m sorry,” I tell Timothy. “No one deserves to be treated like that, especially by a parent.”
He shrugs. “It is what it is.”
“Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing.”
“Of course it isn’t.” He sniffs. “But it’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“You do have the option to pick a life for yourself,” I say to him. “So why aren’t you taking a chance on it?”
“Why are you sitting here all alone?” he counters my question with one of his own, and it’s such a sudden shift that it takes me off guard.
“What?”
“You said Aras is a friend of yours. If that’s the case, then why are you here all by yourself?” he asks.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I came out here for some fresh air,” I answer, lifting a brow. “I am allowed to do that, aren’t I?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, yeah.” He glances around the garden, then rubs his palms together before facing me again.
“I tried so hard to be Aras’s friend, you know.
But he’s so…self-serving that he didn’t give me the time of day – ever,” he says forlornly.
“I even went so far as to show up at his underground arena during fight nights, just so I’d get a chance to interact with him, but he’s always so busy surrounded by his audience and boxers that he never really saw me.
” He runs a hand under his nose as he sniffs again.
“Is that why you sold drugs to his betters and boxers – just so you’d get his attention?” I inquire. “And kept selling it to them until some of them got so addicted that they fucking OD’d on them?”
The air suddenly grows extremely tight as the mood shifts between us. Timothy whips his head at me, and I get a front-row view of his evident shock. I wait for remorse or guilt to follow it, but when it doesn’t, I scoff.
“I almost pitied you,” I admit in a hiss.
“It was a mistake ,” he defends himself, breaking into a sweat. “It really was.”
“Yet I don’t see an ounce of regret on your face.”
“I…” He swallows. “All I was trying to do is earn some money so that I could show my dad that I’m not useless or…or a disgrace to the Byron family. I was trying to fucking redeem myself in his eyes, and last I checked, that is not a crime.”
“Yeah, but killing innocents most definitely is, Timothy,” I tell him. “And that’s what you did – you killed people that didn’t have anything to do with your blind ambition of wanting to impress your monster of a father.”
He looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time. “Who are you?”
I twist a little on the bench, which results in the slit of my dress to shift inward, in turn revealing my Glock, secured in its holster.
I need to be mindful of my shots, since my gun only has six bullets, two of which I’ve already used on the Goswamis. And despite having refills in my clutch, I doubt Timothy would give me a timeout to actually use them. So, whatever I do, I’ll have to do it with the four remaining bullets.
He scrambles off the bench and falls onto the grass, then starts dragging himself away from me. “Stay back!” he shrieks.
“I am literally still sitting, Timothy.”